Arabella’s POV
“We made thirty million dollars in profit.” My eyes widened. “It’s small but we are still starting out. Once we’ve made our name a bigger name, our purse will also get fuller.”
I tried not to gape. Thirty million dollars was small compared to what we stood to gain?
After realizing my life was at stake because of Luciano’s fiance, I left the harem contemplating all the ways I had fucked up and with Alpha Luciano and all the myriad ways in which his bride was going to get back at me for all of that.
The next two days had been dreary and filled with the stench of sickness in the harem which Luciano would never know since he never visited the harem in person. And for some reason, he didn’t call anyone up either. A lot of the women had recovered already but a few remained under the weather because of the concentration of the poisons they had taken in.
I had been exceptionally bored until I had gotten contacted by Natasha and here I was discussing earning millions without batting an eyelid. This must be the draw, I realized. The draw that made almost every major pack in Italy engage in the drug and arms business.
The draw of being the most powerful, the richest, the most untouchable mixed with the ego that Alphas usually had was a heady mix. Someone like Alpha Luciano that had only made good business deals would think it all worth it.
I knew the problems drug addiction caused. While I was still with my father, I would volunteer at rehabs for both humans and wolves amongst other things. Normal human drugs didn’t affect wolves but for a short stint of time before the council had banned it, drugs concentrated enough to make a wolf high had been in use.
They had proven deadly and extremely addictive causing accelerated and uncontrolled shifting, a rise in aggression, god complexes and bloodlust among other things.
When the drugs had been banned, the users had suffered and many still suffered from the withdrawals. That was how potent it had been and my father had been one of the main suppliers. Now I was doing the same. At first, I decided to do this to fuck with Alpha Luciano but now I wondered.
If I was going to be skewing my moral compass in this manner, was it worth doing it for Alpha Luciano of all people?
Why not for a bigger purpose… like freedom? If I had enough money, once I got out of this place I could disappear into any part of the world I wanted. Hell, I could even bribe my way out of the prison I was stuck in currently.
All it would take was a little bit of my conscience. After all, what has having a conscience ever done for me? It had saved Margaret’s life at the expense of my freedom. It had saved Alpha Luciano’s life and condemned me to a life of fear and possible murder by a psychotic fiance. I was done with it.
“So what do we do now? What’s the next move?” I asked Natasha, my mind made up.
“Leave that part for me but there is something that only you can do. To be taken seriously in the drug industry, there is only one thing a person can do. Undercutting one of the big guys. Luckily, we both have one easily accessible to us and that we have a vendetta against to start with.”
She procured what looked like a small black button to me. “This is what you need to do, get this device into Alpha Luciano’s office, not his bedroom, his office in a location he wouldn’t think to look at, then tap it twice to activate it. It is a listening device. With this, we or at least I will be able to know exactly what Alpha Luciano is up to so that we can steal his deals from him.”
I hesitated and then I took the recording device and inspected it. It was small and innocuous. All I had to do was find a legitimate reason to enter his office and drop it off.
Natasha looked at me. “Or have you changed your mind about this then I can…”
“No. I will do it. I want to do it.” I realised it was true. I really wanted to.
Natasha smiled at me and found myself smiling back at her.
*****
Alpha Luciano’s POV
“You want what?!”
I saw red. I wanted to cross the distance between us and strangle him.
I gave him an apology, one that had been so difficult to deliver at that but he had waved that aside to ask for Arabella like I would ever give her to him.
“Luciano.” Uncle Tommaso cautioned then he turned to Anastasia that looked between us like a ship lost at sea. “Dear, why don’t you step out with your cousin for a bit so that we can let Luciano come to a decision faster?”
“Sure.” Anastasia said uncertainly before grabbing her fool of a cousin’s hand and escorting him out of the room.
Good. If I saw his face for one more minute, I might have torn him apart.
The moment the door was shut I turned on my uncle.
“Enough. You have done what you wanted to do now I will do exactly what I want to do. I went along with this mating sham. I didn’t want to ruin your reputation so I let myself be trapped in this ridiculous situation but no more. Have you seen the girl you want me to marry? She looks like a dressed-up cartoon and that cousin of hers wants me to hand over Arabella to him.”
“Who are they to demand that of me? I know that you have some influence over them, use that influence to make them disappear or I will go out there and break off this engagement myself, regardless of the impact it will create on your reputation.”
Uncle Tommaso regarded me with extreme disappointment. “I knew it. You are besotted with that Bianchi girl and have lost sight of the entire purpose for which we abducted her. It was to make her suffer and kill her in front of her father. What does it matter who owns her before we end her?”
I shook my head.
“No, no, no. You do not get to make this about me liking Arabella. Yes, I am possessive about her. Of course, I am. She is mine. Mine to kill, to fuck, to do whatever the hell I please with. Do I like her? No. But the problem here isn’t even Arabella, it is you and that Alec undermining my authority as Alpha of this pack.”
I would not let him turn this into a campaign on how I was becoming soft.
“Listen to yourself, Luciano. Since when have you cared about sharing a woman? Hell, you even loaned out Emery for a week to that human drug lord to sweeten the pot but now it is such a big problem because it is Arabella?” Uncle Tommaso ran his fingers through his hair visibly trying to calm himself before he continued.
“You will go on with this mating and you will give him whatever he bloody well wants, be it Arabella or your entire harem. Do you want to know why? Because they are relatives of the Espositos. Didn’t your sources undercover why I helped them? I’m not a Samaritan.”
“I only help others to help myself. I ensured they owed me a debt that I could cash in later on. Do you realise the opportunity you have in your hands? With the power and name of the Expositos at your fingertips, you could snap your fingers and Vitalio would be gone.”
The Expositos. One of the oldest packs in Italy, some say they were the founding fathers of werewolves in Italy. They were also rumoured to have above two members of their family on the council currently. Their wealth was appreciable as it was dirty. To say they were powerful was an understatement. They practically owned the entire crime syndicate in Italy and pulled everyone’s strings behind the curtain.
Which beggared the question that how could their relatives ever have fallen to hard times that Uncle Luciano could rescue them from? Or had he engineered the hard times himself so as to save them from it?
I suddenly regretted pulling Mikah off the case.
If I had left him to investigate, I would have uncovered this myself and saved myself the embarrassment because now… now I had to give Arabella to him.
*******
Arabella’s POV
I was on my way back to the harem when Margaret saw me.
“Where have you been? Alpha Luciano wants to see you in his office now.”
“His office?” Surely I couldn’t be so lucky that he would invite me to his office the moment I needed to bug the place.
“Yes, his office. Follow me. Quickly.”
Margaret hurried me to his office while my mind spun and I moved the device to my pocket for easy access so that I would be able to get it in place within a moment’s notice.
We arrived at the office and Margaret knocked.
“Enter.”
When we walked in, I was shocked to see not just Alpha Luciano but his uncle, his fiance from hell and Alec.
Suddenly and inexplicably I was nervous.
“You may leave us, Margaret.”
Margaret bowed and let herself out. The tension in the room built.
“Alpha Luciano, you sent for me.” I said since everyone was waiting for me to speak.
Alpha Luciano looked at me. He looked almost hesitant but surely I was mistaken.
“Arabella, from now onwards, Alec will be your new owner.”